A Mad Love by Charlotte Mary Brame (online e book reading TXT) 📖

him; she did not understand love or jealousy in others. She sat now quite helpless before the unhappy wife, whose grief annoyed her.

"This will not do, Marion," she said, "you will make yourself quite ill."

"Ill," repeated Lady Marion, "I have been ill in heart and soul for many days, and now I am sick unto death. I wish I could die; life has nothing left for me."

"Die, my dear, it seems such a trifle, such a trifle; one day spent together on a river. Is that anything for you to die about?"

The sweet blue eyes raised wistfully to hers were full of pain.

"You do not see, you do not understand. Only think how much intimacy there must have been between them before he would ask her to go, or she consent to go. If they are but strangers, or even every-day friends, what could they find to talk about for a whole day?"

The countess shrugged her shoulders.

"I am surprised," she said, "for I thought Madame Vanira so far above all coquetry. If I were you, Marion, I would forget it."

"I cannot forget it," she cried. "Would to God that I could. It is eating my heart away."

"Then," said my lady, "I will speak to Lance at once, and I am quite sure that at one word from me he will give up the acquaintance, for the simple reason that you do not like it."

And with this promise the countess left her daughter-in-law. Once before, not by her bidding, but by her intrigues, she had persuaded him to give up one whom he loved; surely a few words from her now would induce him to give up her whom he could not surely love. It never occurred to her to dream that they were the same.

She saw him as she was driving home, and, stopping the carriage, asked him to drive with her.

"Lance, I have something very serious to say to you. There is no use beating about the bush, Marion is very ill and very unhappy."

"I am sorry for it, mother, but add also she is very jealous and very foolish."

"My dear Lance, your wife loves you--you know it, she loves you with all her heart and soul. If your friendship with Madame Vanira annoys her, why not give it up?"

"I choose to keep my independence as a man; I will not allow any one to dictate to me what friends I shall have, whom I shall give up or retain."

"In some measure you are right, Lance," said the countess, "and so far as gentleman friends are concerned, I should always choose my own; but as this is a lady, of whom Lady Marion has certain suspicions, I should most certainly give her up."

"My wife has no right to be jealous," he said angrily; "it does not add to my love for her."

"Let me speak seriously to you, Lance," said the countess. "Marion is so unhappy that I should not wonder if she were really ill over it; now why not do as she wishes? Madame Vanira can be nothing to you--Marion is everything. Why not give her up?"

A certain look of settled determination that came to her son's face made the countess pause and wonder. She had seen it there for the first and last time when she had asked her son to renounce his young wife, and now she saw it again. Strange that his next words should seem like an answer to her thoughts.

"Mother," he said, "do not ask me; you persuaded me to give up all the happiness of my life, years ago--do not try me a second time. I refuse, absolutely refuse, to gratify my wife's foolish, jealous wish. I say, emphatically, that I will not give up my friendship for Madame Vanira."

Then my lady looked fixedly at him.

"Lance," she said, "what is Madame Vanira to you?"

He could not help the flush that burned his handsome, angry face, and that flush aroused his mother's curiosity. "Have you known her long? Did you know her before your marriage, Lance? I remember now that I was rather struck by her manner. She reminds me forcibly of some one. Poor Marion declares there is some tie between you. What can it be?"

She mused for some minutes, then looked into her son's face.

"Great Heaven, Lance, it can never be!" she cried. "A horrible idea has occurred to me, and yet it is not possible."

He made no answer, but a look of more dogged defiance came into his face.

"It can never be, and yet I think it is so. Can it be possible that Madame Vanira is the--the dairy-maid to whom you gave your young affections?"

"Madame Vanira is the girl I loved, mother, and whom I believed to be my wife--until you parted us."

And my lady fell back in her carriage with a low cry of "Heaven have mercy on us!"


CHAPTER LV.


"WAR TO THE KNIFE."

Lucia, Countess of Lanswell, was in terrible trouble, and it was the first real trouble of her life. Her son's marriage had been rather a difficulty than a trouble--a difficulty that the law had helped her over. Now no law could intervene, and no justice. Nothing could exceed her surprise in finding Madame Vanira, the Queen of Song, the most beautiful, the most gifted woman in England, positively the "dairy-maid," "the tempestuous young person," the artful, designing girl from whom by an appeal to the strong arm of the law she had saved her son. She paused in wonder to think to herself what would have happened if the marriage had not been declared null and void. In that case, she said to herself, with a shrug of the shoulders, in all probability the girl would not have taken to the stage at all. She wondered that she had not sooner recognized her. She remembered the strong, dramatic passion with which Leone had threatened her. "She was born an actress," said my lady to herself, with a sneer. She determined within herself that the secret should be kept, that to no one living would she reveal the fact that the great actress was the girl whom the law had parted from her son.

Lord Chandos, the Duke of Lester, the world in general, must never know this. Lord Chandos must never tell it, neither would she. What was she to do? A terrible incident had happened--terrible to her on whose life no shadow rested. Madame Vanira had accepted an engagement at Berlin, the fashionable journals had already announced the time of her departure, and bemoaned the loss of so much beauty and genius. Lord Chandos had announced his intention of spending a few months in Berlin, and his wife would not agree to it.

"You know very well," she said, "that you have but one motive in going to Berlin, and that is to be near Madame Vanira."

"You have no right to pry into my motives," he replied, angrily; and she retorted that when a husband's motives lowered his wife, she had every reason to inquire into them.

Hot, bitter, angry words passed between them. Lord Chandos declared that if it pleased him to go to Berlin he should go; it mattered little whether his wife went or not; and Lady Chandos, on her side, declared that nothing should ever induce her to go to Berlin. The result was just what one might have anticipated--a violent quarrel. Lady Chandos threatened to appeal to the duke. Her husband laughed at the notion.

"The duke is a great statesman and a clever man," he replied; "but he has no power over me. If he interfered with my arrangements, in all probability we should not meet again."

"I will appeal to him," cried Lady Marion; "he is the only friend I have in the world."

The ring of passionate pain in her voice startled him; a sense of pity came over him. After all, this fair, angry woman was his wife, whom he was bound to protect.

"Marion, be reasonable," he said. "You go the wrong way to work; even supposing I did care for some one else, you do not go the way to make me care for you; but you are mistaken. Cease all these disagreeable recriminations, and I will be the kindest of husbands and the best of friends to you. I have no wish, believe me, Marion, to be anything else."

Even then she might have become reconciled to him, and the sad after consequences have been averted, but she was too angry, too excited with jealousy and despair.

"Will you give up Madame Vanira for me?" she said, and husband and wife looked fixedly at each other. "You say you will be a loving husband and a true friend: prove it by doing this--prove it by giving up Madame Vanira."

Lord Chandos was silent for a few minutes; then he said:

"I cannot, for this reason: Madame Vanira, as I happen to know, has had great troubles in her life, but she is thoroughly good. I repeat it, Marion, thoroughly good. Now, if I, as you phrase it, 'give her up,' it would be confessing that I had done wrong. My friendship is some little comfort to her, and she likes me. What harm is there in it? Above all, what wrong does it inflict on you? Answer me. Has my friendship for Madame Vanira made me less kind, less thoughtful for you?"

No answer came from the white lips of the trembling wife.

He went on:

"Why should you be foolish or narrow-minded? Why seek to end a friendship pure and innocent? Why not be your noble self, Marion--noble, as I have always thought you? I will tell you frankly, Madame Vanira is going to Berlin. You know how lonely it is to go to a fresh place. She happened to say how desolate she should feel at first in Berlin. I remarked that I knew the city well, and then she wished we were going. I pledge you my honor that she said 'we.' Never dreaming that you would make any opposition, I said that I should be very glad to spend the next few weeks in Berlin. I cannot tell how it really was, but I found that it was all settled and arranged almost before I knew it. Now, you would not surely wish me to draw back? Come with me to Berlin, and I will show you how happy I will make you."

"No," she replied; "I will share your heart with no one. Unless I have all I will have none. I will not go to Berlin, and you must give up Madame Vanira," she continued; "Lance, you cannot hesitate, you must see your duty; a married man wants no woman friend but his wife. Why should you spend long hours and whole days _tete-a-tete_ with a stranger? Of what can you find to speak? You know in your heart that you are wrong. You say no. Now in the name of common sense and fairness, let me ask, would you like me to make of any man you know such a friend as you have made of Madame Vanira?"

"That is quite another thing," he replied.

Lady Chandos laughed, sadly.

"The usual refuge of a man when he is brought to bay," she said. "No words, no arguments will be of any use to me; I shall never be really friends with you until you give up Madame Vanira."